FG Suspends Salary Of 1,000 Civil Servants And Spends N35bn On Workers’ March Salary

 Mr Jonah Otunla

The Federal Government has suspended the March salaries of over 1,000 civil servants who refused to comply with the directive for the upgrade of their account to the ten digits Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Number

The Accountant General of the Federation, Mr Jonah Otunla stated this on Wednesday in Abuja at a workshop on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System.

The CBN had released the guidelines on NUBAN scheme in August 2010 to achieve a uniform numbering structure among all Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria within nine months.

NUBAN, according to the CBN, has the potential to resolve problems with electronic payments in Nigeria as many of them are related to specification of wrong beneficiary account numbers.

The initial deadline was June 1, 2011. This was extended by the CBN to June 1, 2012; and at the expiration of the date, it was further extended to July 1, 2013.

The Office of the Accountant General of the Federation had last year stated that since NUBAN became fully operational on July 1, 2013, all members of staff of MDAs were supposed to have complied with it.

Otunla urged staff to make sure that they had the NUBAN, which was the major challenge the office was facing in paying workers.

He, however said that that about N35bn had been paid as salaries for the month of March to 283,000 of 308 Ministries, Departments and Agencies captured under the IPPIS platform.

The IPPIS is a new innovation of the Federal Government that is meant to enhance planning and budgeting by making personnel cost to be based on actual verified figures and not estimates.

The AGF, who was represented by the Co-ordinator IPPIS, AGF office, Mrs Fatima Mede said, “In March, 283,000 staff were paid about N35bn.

“These 283,000 staff cuts across 308 Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government we currently have on the system.

“We are hopeful that by June, we should have all federal MDAs in the country on the IPPIS netrwork.”

Otunla said also that his office had commenced work on getting all Federal Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of education and also Para-Military agencies on the IPPIS platform.

He said that the IPPIS would enable the government keep adequate tab of its recurrent expenditure. (Source - Punch)